Mind scan 2005-06
12.9.05
I had these marvellous thoughts this morning after my jogging on the beach. One of these days again where I feel inspired and fulfilled. I was thinking about the way I could develop my workshop. After the warm up and the copying, which is excellent to open up, communicate, feel the others, acknowledge the body in space in reference with another body, then to open up again into the full space around, for making choice and to compose. I would like to have a reflection process on the idea of the perfect movement or the perfect gesture or pause or perfect form. I could imagine that these exercises would be a fine tuning with the entire body and mind, to go into slow motion from one perfect form to the next one, like t’ai chi but purely improvised, with the need and the inspiration of the moment. Once we acknowledge the perfect balance of a gesture with our whole being, we can move to the next one.
            Another idea I would like to work on is the concept of the goal and the preparation to reach this goal. I am talking about the tir à l’arc. The exercise starts like we have a bow in our hand and we are preparing to shot the arrow. We are in a relatively relaxed tension, a perfect form and balance, visualising the goal with closed eyes. The goal should look like a target, a dot in space. Once we are really seeing the goal, we make a short identification with it, and as we become our goal, we release the bow with the arrow, the body just releases its whole tension. Then we start again with the other side.
13.9.05
I tried the incredible exercise I found yesterday in my ‘divine inspiration’. It didn’t work! I didn’t feel the thing I was supposing to feel. As perfect it worked yesterday, as inappropriate it felt today. Did I do something differently? What does it mean? I am looking for a kind of consistency in life, but all what I experience is a permanent and constant change; let’s say a constant adaptation. In the mean time where I want to develop my way of warm up with an exploration system of the body and mind, it becomes contradictory with my own needs. Every day I do something different, my needs are different. All what I do stays in one frame, the body-mind research, and in that sense I have a kind of consistency. The discovery is endless; it is in a constant mutation and so is also my way I do my research: in constant development.
One more element I need to add to the warm up method is the pulsation, the beat, the pulse. I need to create dynamic patterns to increase the inner rhythm, like the way it happens in the workshop in South Africa this summer. We used clapping, the voice, and stamping in the ground.16.9.05
Running on the beach is really the best warm up. I thought about a subchapter of the pedagogy chapter, “The choreographed breath”. I think that every intention in the movement should be supported by an intentional breath pattern. This means that the breathing pattern should be choreographed at the same time as the physical movement. Breath intensifies the physicality. In the right order it becomes: intention, breath, physicality, and in a deeper way: vacuum, intuition, breath, physicality. The intention-breath pattern makes the connection between the timeless awareness and the physical body.
The anchor of breath is in the belly. It is also the place where the food is transformed into a concentrated energy. The oriental philosophy calls it chi. It can be stored here and is the place where all movements basically start. Starting from here every movement becomes supported by breath connected to the belly. Intention, qualities, and breath are all intimately related with more or less awareness. This awareness can be trained to become completely natural. Some ideas for Corps à Corps.
1. I have a mask for a supply of oxygen with a bottle in my basket. The mask is transparent and a wireless microphone is connected. The idea is to need a supply of extra oxygen to be able to continue and to give with the sound of the breath in the mask a feeling of claustrophobia.
2. I thought of having a lot of different costumes. The idea is to search for your own identity.
3. I want to repeat the idea of the microphone in the stethoscope, like I did in the Regentes Theatre in The Hague. The idea is to hear the different rhythms of the heart. The heart is not beating regularly; the idea is that everything is constantly adapting.
4. The idea is about the manipulation from far away or even not too far of another body. We are always manipulated by something unknown.18.9.05
No idea translated in the body is more meaningful than another one. It all depends on the way it is developed and accomplished. A gesture gets a meaning when it is associated with codes. Ultimately everything is a code: a nature pattern or social pattern (code).19.9.05
I want for the video of Corps à Corps an image that goes like the atomic bomb. It is like a ball from light and from that a ring is emerging and gets bigger and bigger. This image should be repeated again and again, linked with a sound that underlines the new core coming back and back. For the sound I thought, for a section, to have as a source of inspiration the ocean waves. I really see a strong solo in the beginning. 24.9.05
It was very interesting to see Revolver by VA Wölfl, danced by Neuer Tanz from Düsseldorf, in the Rotterdamse Schouwburg. The clothes changing, the neon light, the microphone, the white cube, the singing, war images, magician tricks, they are all elements when I think to make a new piece that cross my mind. Indeed for Corps à Corps I imagine this section where I would change clothes with the meaning of discomfort in my skin or in the research of my own identity. Actually, the changes of clothes were done yesterday at random during the whole piece, so to say with an unclear purpose. In the other hand the ideas and the meanings of every section were as clear as an idea can be put on the stage. It was almost a demonstration of how to put ideas together with no emotion, just as it is. Since the actors are no ideas but humans, the emotion arises anyway, because we can easily identify ourselves with the secretary look, mini skirt with high heels, or with a suit of a man. The main streaming emotion through the piece was cynicism and making fun of themselves, because the actor/dancers were dead serious. When you do something funny dead seriously, I will laugh.25.9.05
The idea is like that: I want to show different inner rhythms and how they can work or parallel or ignore each other. The video will increase the speed of the cut going faster and faster. The music will also go in a higher pitch, stronger and stronger. I will move during this great acceleration in a study way, slowly, peacefully. So we have the image of a slow-motion body with a great acceleration of the image and the sound. We should arrive to a huge peak, where the ears are challenged.29.09.05
With all the performances I saw lately, I did not see really an exhaustion of an idea. According to me making a performance is a chance to make some statement and this opportunity is often not well used. 30.09.05
I thought on my bike of the scene of fear for Isabelle. She would do a quiet solo with a real dog barking like crazy, pulling on the string of his master. Another one is an image where you see at the end of an action the head of someone get tilted, waiting a little bit and finally see a piece of shit falling out of his head.1.10.05
I still want to work on slow motion and see where it will bring our game.3.10.05
This is the shower concept. It is about changing spatial location through an acoustic signal. Water is running hard in the shower. It is running, running and it is quit long. We hear a tap, a little roosted, turning; the water stops, a towel is taken and put over the head. It is much more silent, breath took over, and inside of the towel is confined space. The close rhythm of breath is now the new place where we are. The shower concept is that the show, when you go out of the audience, makes you feel like you just had a shower. This idea can happen only on a long run, let’s say 65 minutes. 4.10.05
Such strange feeling! Today I saw some similar works of Korzo Production for those 28 Dutch theatre directors. I feel like I am doing an exam; I am literally overwhelmed by fear. First comes the question of where are all those productions going, in terms of meaning, communication and identity. All pieces till now where pretty introvert and abstract. I do feel going again through such pressure, since we are or are not going to be selected. In these moments I think that I am not made for this job that I should look for something else. It is like having a feeling of dropping some weight to feel good again.5.10.05
I think about what I am good at and I do not know yet. It is that I can say and affirm something in a very definite and affirmative way; okay, let’s rephrase it. When I am performing I believe 100 % in what I am doing. I can by that communicate in a direct way. Knowing that could bring me further, further in the affirmation of my own ideas. A whole lesson again about the investment and trust in what you are doing without being super dependent of the result. So we did not get selected for this Dutch theatre tour, but we accept the little headache of this morning. Our work need to grow and to get more mature. Yes, mature like the final result of a research. We are in the middle of it and that feels good. I got all the tools in my hands.6.10.05
One tool is to know that everything exist here and there. If I rephrase it, it would sound like I know it is somewhere, but not exactly in my hand now. It is about focusing the object in the mind, even if it is not there. I can give as an example the way I feel a scene should look like in Corps à Corps. I can think that I still have to find it, or I can think that what I need here is already somewhere in my mind and all I need is to formulate it. 8.10.05
I like to put down my little thoughts in the computer, but I do not do it as it would be my ultimate truth. It does mean something, but at the same time it stays what it is, just some observations without pretension. I have always been fascinated by the fantasy a mind can create. I love to be the butterfly that is following thoughts after thoughts. I realize that they will be always here and there and again here. They are parts of me but also my landscape. They would not disappear from one day to the other one. I feel that I am not only connecting with my dreams but also within my body, meaning that the research of my actual concern is bound to the energy spend in my intention in the divers daily tasks. Let’s say that my physical body and my energetic body are connected with the intention I put in. This is only a question of awareness.
I am still in this existential questioning of our place in the world, not so much in a social way but with a global awareness, thinking in the first place that the earth is one system, our world is one being, that this consciousness will bring us to integration and love and that will make us enjoy every moment we are here. Lovely new age stuff all that…but deep insight with simplicity; also with logical thinking it make sense.
            So what I would like to tell to myself is: do not let yourself distracted by your own labyrinth of fantasy, thoughts and dreams. Act and use all your tools you have already. It is like things are becoming real. Communicate, do, work, talk, rest, enjoy. It seems like a middle line between up and down, or like a compass to show the direction.We had in the studio the fun to put ourselves en scene with humour and that is good spirit. I am wondering how would look a solo where you always take the public as an obvious spectator. We did the opposite in the first version of Corps à Corps. The American presenter, I don’t know who she was, said with passion how strong it was two persons doing the same thing, after watching our fifteen minutes Corps à Corps version. Isa’s idea: Jérôme is giving food in the hand to Isabelle, ‘à mettre en scene. Isa is doing a physical solo and comes to me to breathe the air from my mask. 9.10.05
Today twelve years passed since I met with Isabelle. It is a beautiful Sunday morning; the sun is shinning trough the green leaves of the trees. At four o’clock this morning we were awake. I had the idea of the oxygen masks falling from the top like in an airplane.
A
I still don’t have a clear idea of how we want to build Corps à Corps. I am still thinking that I should see already the result in the front of my eyes, although we did not spent much time in the studio. I feel strongly that I should lay down the good questions at this moment. When we will be in the studio we will try them out and see first how the mood is and how much distance we can put in our “mise en scene”. Distance, cynicism, all that for not drawing and sinking in a vast no man’s water. How to build tension, this must be our main concern in the first part. The part we have now is so symbiotic and too beautiful. And that could go perfectly, if it comes as a counterpoint. I am wondering how we could do a real fight on the stage. We need to keep this part of fifteen minutes for sure and even to repeat it, let’s say one time in the beginning, cut with the new theatrical part. We could also build tension by being a part, facing front and do really little. It could be like each one is waiting for the other to make the first move; or it could be an introverted aggression.
B
Every body have the right to express and develop their own ideas. Do it and show it.
We as trained dancer, we do not get the initiative to express and develop ideas; the only time in the year is during the young choreographer evening. Cynically I am asking myself if it is not only a political manipulation. This would be to give a little window to express yourself, so the rest of the year, you do what you have been told to do. As a dancer you are serving. The concept of serving and loving are spiritual statements and I used to use it to serve the choreographer and to love my colleagues. I am good at what I trained in and I have this lack in expressing and developing ideas in a conscious way. It is not that I never did it, but I did not train it the way I need today. It is definitively very confronting to think about it and to see how others resolve the process.
C
To start with a clear idea and then try to do it with your body/props/colleagues/space. It seems that when the momentum of the scene stops, it is better to cut it and to go on. To link parts that not necessary have to deal with each other can kill the flow. A story line is a wrong subject for dance. A story is said by the way actions and repetitions are done. Repetition is part of the composition. Every time I see it, I say to myself that it is a great tool.15.10.05
Thoughts are going very fast, at speed of the light actually. Maybe what is difficult for me to admit within the process of creation is that at one point I do not know what to choose anymore. I do not know what I am looking for, although I know that I am searching. It is a little blindfolded process. Open your eyes, close your eyes, open your eyes, and close your eyes. I used it a lot in my first working period with Isa. We became good at doing duets with closed eyes. Everything comes down to what I would like to see and experiment as an audience. What do I see actually on the stage when I watch a performance? I would like to see two characters, a structure, interaction and a clear relation between them. I would like to identify myself with something, what ever it is, like a part of the décor or music, an attitude, a feeling. So I see basically a part of myself on the stage. Too much questions at the end do not lead to anywhere, if you do not link them with an action. Because funny enough I can tell that I do not know where we go, but at the same time I know exactly where I want to go. I like physicality, simplicity, honesty, boldness, fullness as well as emptiness. I like structure, fun, humour and of course I believe that all that can be expressed with the art of choreographing. Whaw, what a programme!The fight! The dog I think we have already too much ideas. Which choices we are going to make, that is the interesting part. Two thirds of drama and one third of harmonious feeling? Our list yet:
All clothes on the floor
Street foot video, 5 minutes
Brazilian music, exchanging clothes, 5 minutes
Corps à Corps till the movie included, 13 minutes (movie 3,5 minutes)
Labyrinth meeting, video little children, 5 minutes
Man object, body manipulates the woman, 5 minutes
Finishing with church bell, laugh marriage
Solo dog barking, fear, 3 minutes
Fight karate, yellow light?, 4 minutes
Solo density, visage exchange, video exchange of faces/masque oxygen 4 minutes
Flash back at Corps, 1 minute plenitude
Solo rage/scream Isa video train/stroboscope, 4 minutes
Flash back at Corps, 1minute plenitude
Atomic bomb/duet pulse and image, 4 minutes
Where to link sound with the body neck, 2 minutes
Rest of Corps/day night to make a last ritual, 7 minutes
Nirvana
Total 60 minutes
Overall to find an attitude, a state of mind. 17.10.05
Where does the energy come from? From outside, from inside, all around with everybody? This is an idea for the rage solo and for the meaning of the labyrinth. What is the conflict meaning?18.10.05
I heard a lot of how much competition there is out there. How you deal with pressure, I was asked. Remind what you wanted to do, in the first place, why you started all that. Every one can feel himself overwhelmed in front of a group. Pressure can make you bright, make yourself think clearly. I enjoyed letting the dancers make their own steps and then shape them. Going further in that direction, dancers should know which kind of mood/direction/intention/image they should proceed. You feel then more as a decision maker, and your energy is just focused on that. You are not in this place where you are in front of a white page, but you are already in confrontation with a lot of different elements, like time, space, intention, meaning and goal that will lead to a form and an identity. So there are the craftsmanship and your own decision making to make your work look like this or that. To make look like, what an awful way to say. What your work is touching or where does it come from, what is the place it starts from, how is it received? Again how to profile you in the market was also something which came back. What is your particularity, what makes you special? This is a question that the market, the foundation boards or media will ask you, but you want to continue your exploration and your work. What keeps you going? Working with people and asking also the same question were an answer.20.10.05
We could bang our head with a helmet of course against the wall in the entrance and then enter after the public on the stage starting choosing clothes.24.10.05
The thing is to redefine for myself what it I am really doing is. This comes again when we are changing surroundings. This is our second residency and I feel right just doing nothing. The setup time is always longer than we think, although we started only one and half our ago. Finding our mark in a new environment, that is it. For our first residency I was a bit overwhelmed by the whole new setup up and on top I had to do the music. Today it is a bit different. I need to concentrate on what I want to do. We are all very excited with this week of work in the Tanzhaus in Düsseldorf.21.10.05
This week has been a break through in terms of the idea I have from being a choreographer. When I see the title of my research question, it seems already dated. My interest right now is to use the tool of decision maker, which is a little like God organizing ideas together. Esmée Olthuis was using the word God for the function of the composer with a smile). She called us composers and at the end it is what we are. 25.10.05           
The idea is to open the suitcase and having the sound of a bird coming out or a lion or a bunch of people.27.10.05
Too many ideas! Not easy to want to please everyone. I am already overwhelmed with all these raising questions and prolific ideas. How to stay open minded and at the same time not losing track of the first idea is a question that we are facing. I feel that I need to develop a synthetic mind that can resume a sum of ideas, but the main thing is to stick to my own vision and feeling without getting in a conflict with other views. From a psychological point of view it is also not to feel threatened or aggressed or offended with all different inputs.
31.10.05
We are all functioning differently. This was showed this week with a lot of clarity. How to communicate and towards what we are all aiming were the topics. Communication starts with a breath, a word, an intention. So that is not that complicated. More is to articulate what you want in the context and make it clear for the others. What do we want to say with Corps à Corps, why we are using the video and how? And then how Leili (Gueranfar, video maker) and Sebastian (Schatz, composer) can really express their arts in the work? Just to explain over and over what we are doing and where do we go could take weeks. We decided to understand it in the action. So the process of this week was pretty scattered in the sense that we where jumping from one technical thing to one video sequence, to one choreographic idea until we just settled down with one idea and to fiddle around with movement, sound and image. 4.11.05
Let’s find necessity in the work in itself. About warm up: do something rhythmical, run in a circle, facing front, do all jumping facing a wall at one meter. We are starting now chronologically. If we are thinking it, tomorrow we will be it. In a creation process, it is the action which liberates. A little lazy today, but a good creativity in the air, focused without being really on the spot. We found a new duet with a lamp, that we manipulated while we are dancing.15.11.05
Some thoughts after the run. The elements, the ideas and scene should come back, like the cage. The ideas must become a clear statement. The music is not yet a whole. There are no real details in the work. We have to take the time for an idea to let it become magic.18.11.05
For the next two weeks I am writing only notes after all the run-throughs we do almost everyday. I will just choose some important ones. We had a meeting with Bill Bissel, curator-administrator of the Art Foundation in Philadelphia. He wants us to come for a six weeks creation with or without a product at the end; a kind of educational programme.19.11.05
We are starting to freeze the codes since we are going for framed impro. We find a non touching electric contact. We still have the mirror section.21.11.05
The work is about our differences and how to come together.23.11.05
We founded the end, grabbing the thing with the hand. The piece is starting from casual attitude to end, very abstract with a hand searching and receiving. The piece is about searching you own space with your own individuality.
24.11.05
The sensitivity in the music does not work. The rhythm of the piece is really flat (now sixty minutes). Necessity is missing in the work. Idea for the beginning: we should get more in each other’s space. The dramaturgy has not been embodied yet. Now we are fixing parts that need to be more defined, and shortening parts that are stretching too much.25.11.05
Finally Sebastian is here with his equipment. We can work step by step together. That was not the intention at the beginning, but it is his first dance work and his music is a whole world in itself. The music these last weeks becomes always better, just better from the previous version. But we are still very far away from what it should be.28.11.05
The big movie which was playing the role of opening a new space, is out. It was like: “And now the movie!”. The difficulty was not too much to enter, to go into the movie but more to go out of it and how to come back to the dance. In emergency we called Dirk Haubrich to help Sebastian with the music. I am so released. He did a great job. Egbert Mellema came with a new sort of lamp: the rear section became an intimate scene. Dance has its own musicality, meaning that it is one of the instruments, one of the voices in the music. Another thing was that the whole work is very much back: video choreography. We corrected that. How the creature should come in and how to make transition with the light? I think Peter Lemmens (light designer) did a good job. Dirk is also saying that we are giving away everything at the beginning. He is talking about how to use the idea of the teaser. It is like keeping the secret cards until the right moment.29.11.05
No coming back behind the cage for the end. The place for it is now left stage front. A lot has been said for my introduction text; some thought it was too long, some too short.2.12.05
Well, the premiere is behind us and a long tour is in front of us. At one point it was not relevant to play the journalist in my own playground. Actions followed by decision, always in the research mode. The process was very exciting, very rich, and never easy. It is also the whole question of being inside and outside of a work. Now I put my suit of a performer, and that feels just enough. Our days of work were crazy long. We did often ten hours and forgot to take real breaks. The coming together of the sound, light, costume and dance in the last two days were crucial and exciting. Leo Spreksel, but also Stacz Willems, Johanna Körgel as well as Peter Lemmens were our feedback team, as we the time came for the need of external eyes. Satisfied? Yes of course. How the tension bow idea worked throughout the piece is hard to say, but I think we managed to find some weight and some place for each idea.5.12.05
The collaboration with all those collaborators was a real challenge. Leili and Sebastian were totally inexperienced in the making of a dance piece. It was also my desire to bring people in this adventure who could have different eyes and different experiences and so to say to bring something new and fresh. But it turned out that our methodologies of work are very different. Next time we have really. Before we start with the work to exchange our creative process and the tension bow of the project. Leili was for instance amazed how the whole piece is drastically coming together the three last days. But of course that is a work that starts much earlier in the process. She is a script editor and the way she used to work is to follow what is said in advance. Enter in a creative process asks a lot of humility, I think. Patience and humility are very important basics in a creative process.10.12.05
We are starting our tour with Düsseldorf. It is like a little second premiere, since they are also co-producer. I saw yesterday the work of Stephanie Tiersch. I am glad to have seen all the clichés she provided with five women. The pity is that she did not bring it further. There was the wig, fake high heels, the fight, little anger, seduction, striptease, blood, the tunnel in video, stroboscope, many cloths, a white wall with separate pieces like a puzzle, the party, baby. As a musician she had a guitar player plus tape, the whole in 90 minutes, scene after scenes without or with little transitions. The tension bow was extremely flat; there were actually no hills and valleys, no real peak and no real emptiness. The entire work was a kind of parody, but not really, to be taken in the second degree but nothing was really developed until the end.11.12.05
My body was tired before the show, a combination of tiredness and excitement. It feels like I cannot feel the small, micro movements inside myself. It felt impossible to move fast. Knowing my state of body, I realize that I had to open the senses to small and organic movements, so I could reach after some bigger range. If I would stay in this mood, I would dance the whole show to “feel something” and I would not enjoy. So I concentrated only on small movements for the warm up and breathing with it. That was enough and we had a very good show.
            About the process of making, the most difficult part was finally for us to find a structure, so we would be able to express our dance and our body. Because at the end it is that what speaks and not the video or the effect of music and light. We get in touch, we meet two characters on stage and we listen to their story. That is one of the big lines.
The other big issue was the narrative or the non-narrative way of putting the story together. The structure is the dramaturgy. One way of constructing the piece was to build it from a composition’s point of view: repeated elements, counter-points, harmony, more than from a director’s point of view. But very soon it became obvious that was not the way we could work together.
            This was one of the raisons also why we spend two weeks of building and trashing it the next day. That was a frustrating period. We got in this hole and this was because of two things. First the video and then how we would integrate the old version of Corps à Corps (that we called Corps à Corps 1). We made three scenes that started from the video. That meant that the starting point was not directly what we wanted to express with dance but how can we integrate the video element in dance. So there was something fairly rigid at the beginning of the process. Then we had Corps 1 that was divided in two. It was the reference part of our relation, let us say the ideal part were we could look back or look up. But to divide it, made it weak and it lost all its strength.
            In the first part there were more labyrinth solos and tension would take place. We wanted to work out a different way of moving. But we always came back with what we were, with our own style. The only thing that stayed for me is the shoes. I am moving differently with shoes or without. Everything is going towards less and less, although our less is always condense. We are ending with just a hand, trying to grab the invisible.12.12.05
We are just in the car to Zürich, after our performance in Düsseldorf. The show is growing and we have pleasure doing it. The organisation in the Theatre Rigiblick is really on the edge. Since it has been rented and paid by the Zürich Art Council the direction does not care if there is public, although they said to Jasmine Morand that we could count on a 1000-1500 euro at the box office. Hopefully it will go nicely and the public will show up. We are the performers; each of us has its own role. The nice thing about this production is that everything can be in the car: floor lamp, four bars for the “creature”, the two frame cubes, two beamers, a light computer, our suitcase with our street cloths and our costumes and some extra wire, us two with Egbert Mellema, the light technician and Johanna Körgel, our production manager.14.12.05
It is our first performance in Switzerland. Let us say it is a little marker in our path. There are little people coming tonight, but some important people of the dance scene.17.12.05
Here is Sierre, welcome in Wallis! Enrico Gonzalez’s quote (sound tech from Jasmine):”This is about spending time together to realize a vision”. Always back to the basics. Another one from Isa: If you did not experience it, you would not understand it. Referring to a performance, thinking from this point of view, what would it mean?19.12.05
I had the word ‘hormones’ in mind this morning. How much do hormones rule our life? Women have naturally a greater knowledge about it, but men are having also these different influences. I have the feelings that the influence is huge and mostly unconscious, but at the same time I believe that we should go with the flow; allow these chemicals be part of our life in an organic way. No suppression, no control but an understanding and an awareness of it. We are coming back with the relation we have with our own body. Talking about fibromalgy sickness, it becomes once more evident how all the harmonious communications with ourselves and our life experience are essential.
            About tension bow in Marvin, the piece of Jasmine Morand with whom we shared the evenings in Switzerland. Watching the work from this point of view, I could not see clear tableaux or clear ideas in the construction of the movement. One idea came after the next one, like at random. She used a very dominant music that goes in one direction for 30 minutes: loud and full subwoofer. The relief after is of course very nice but too short, since she is trying to build a tension for 30 minutes especially with the soundtrack. I see of course all my weakness in the work of others, since that is my concern in the moment: development at random, no really little idea reached, no musical connection with the dance. I had an emotion and that was repulsion. Having to dance after maybe I was not ready to let myself go inside.
            Since we did Corps à Corps with Marvin in the first part, the audience is entering differently in our work. For me it is clear that to shake half an hour on your seat because the music is so loud, makes you numb and affects your sensibility. She was going for a certain trance, but for me it does not work. Aestheticism wise the piece is really detailed and nicely done.
            My family came from Geneva and they had different criticism. I was surprised how they came with that, like from different people the train hug comes too soon, the costumes are bad, we should put make up on, to dancy at the end, the change towards the last scene is too abrupt, not understanding the different tableaux, the bows are unclear, in stead of seeing the message and the emotion we are carrying with the work. Although my father is the first one to criticize, he was the one who loved it. My mother and sister are tough. At the same time I appreciate their sincerity. When I was saying to Jasmine my feelings about the music, she said I was the first one to tell here that, and that was so evident. The people that surround us or whom we are working with are so essential in that sense. And I think it has to do with the order of the programme. We want to come first in the double bill with Jasmine in Rotterdam.3.1.06
The use of dynamics in composition. According to my experience, I have been always very attracted to dancers who used dynamics of movement in a clear and explicit way. It is like a game and some use of playfulness. It makes the dance extremely interesting. A dancer, who will dance in a flat manner, will be connoted as boring and uninspired. The use of tension and release of it starts in the music composition. The composer should know how he wants to use the tension bow in the phrasing. This will frame the rhythm of the dance and its quality.8.1.06
Thought about the performance of Jan Fabre, History of tears. There is a lot to be said about it, but let us just write down what I remember two days after having seen the work in the Muziektheater in Amsterdam. I liked the performance very much. I thought that the theme of the tears and the bodily water was developed in a complete way: the performance lasted 95 minutes. There is this mixture of prophetic text, search for chaos and order, craziness and beauty that makes the performance total theatre. Can we do a work today without text, live musicians and naked bodies? I say that probably because of my own inspiration. I could really feel the maturity of this artist; he really goes for it in the depth and in the length. There was some absolutely beautiful moments, like the whole stage covered by these bottles of glass, framed with these eight huge ladders in wood. Every time I was feeling somewhere elevated, the moment dropped and was gone. So all my senses were pleased, but my emotion was a bit stuck in a mental process where it could not suddenly go in unexpected place or let’s say, make its own journey.
11.1.06
It is interesting to see the connection or disconnection of what I call sensation and thoughts. As a dancer we are trained to connect ourselves with sensation or to go also against it, especially within the learning process of a technique. To learn any choreography, the sensation of the movement, the kinetic feeling is one of the prominent tools to remember the steps. The memory of the body in this sense is phenomenal: it can remember steps years after even if the brain has no idea about it anymore. So we are very aware of body sensations. Thoughts and ideas are producing certainly also physical sensation. I would bet that a mathematician has also physical responds, for instance when he is pleased with some calculation or with some demonstration of his knowledge. Thoughts and images can be as attractive as well as repulsive. We all know that. They have power and actually the border between sensation, physicality and thoughts when seen as a whole, could easily disappear. This is also why the feeling of love is universally recognised as one of the most beautiful feelings: it connects the mind and the body. We are bound with the concept of connection and disconnection, because it is part of our everyday life as dancer. I am wondering how is the life of a lawyer, who is busy the whole time with rules. He is also an actor and has also his play. Every job has its own sensations, but as a dancer I would say there are fewer words between your mind and your body and that makes it more genuine.12.1.06
What did I learn today? What has been repeated to me again? To whom can I be grateful today? The process from the wake up time to the applause after the performance is every time different; today was an uneasy one. Yesterday I watched Limelight (1952) by Charles Chaplin. I could not stop identifying myself with Calvero, the has-been clown and main character. This movie is not only about the down fall of a clown, with his career and his private life, but about hope and the beauty of life, although it has a bitter taste. I will have to step out one day myself too.
            We have to reinvent Corps à Corps, load it with energy and clarity every time and it stays a challenge for every show. By writing down this day from my notebook, someone came today to me with a lot of passion, talking about our piece. It is always surprising when someone comes a few weeks after the show and shares with you his strong impression. She really enjoyed it and actually a lot of persons loved this show of the 12 January. She thought that the beginning and the end were too short; were we afraid to stretch those two parts? Another one said about the same evening how tired she came in and how much she felt renewed and appreciated our energy. Those are unexpected presents.13.1.06
Friday 13th, mmmh. I am just realizing how confined we are in tracks of time and space, just by going somewhere: the train would not wait for you, the station is there and not here, the train goes on tracks, always the same, you are transported with the speed of the train, not slower not faster and all that on a pink seat. Here comes the absurd phase, but the cosmic connection need is not far away. I still need to address my gratitude to someone, somewhere, somehow, otherwise I have the feeling I will lose the meaning of all that. It became essential to talk to … to make connection is the … This is just a reference to a TV game, where you have to guess the missing word. Life is like that also. Things we have, things we do not know: an answer, money, emotion. Actually it is not a matter of having, because each item alone is nothing. It is maybe the overall picture that we are missing a lot of … But we still are racing to fill the gaps and at the end are there really gaps to be filled in?15.1.06
The timing in a work is at the end really subjective. A scene should have this length and not another, because it seems right and it makes sense. That is why the writing about the tension bow is ambitious and subjective, but then also exciting. I think it is relevant, also because in each successful piece the tension bow is well directed and well balanced with the rhythm and contents.16.1.06
Nothing is necessary to start the mind engine, the producer of thoughts; it just goes automatically on. You do not need to push it or to mistrust it, fearing that it would not produce thoughts and analysis. It does it by itself. Just plant some seeds that will grow by themselves. What you need to do is to allow these seeds to grow by making some space, by being patient, accompany them by acknowledging their progress. This is really an inner dialogue, between me as teacher and me as student. We surely have both inside.17.1 06
I shouldn’t loose of sight the feeling of freedom and joy a dancer can feel while he is moving. As a dancer I can with movement and visualisation experience things that are unreal but real at the same time.22.1.06
What is the identity difference between the performer and me? In Indian dance and a lot of ethnic dance, the ritual of putting make up is essential. This time is created to leave the personality and to enter into the character of the piece. It is a process of metamorphose and transformation. It is in this preparation that the success of the performance lays. When I feel ready, nothing can stop me having fun and giving my best. Some nights I would like to run away, because the preparation is laborious and when the time has come, I just do not feel perfectly ready. Some days I will need little time, and some days I wake up with the performance in my mind.19.2.06
I am starting after three days of audition in Codarts a new dance piece for the students. I am very excited by the perspective of teaching my way of doing. The students seem to enjoy this new way. I was looking for collaboration with a composer from the conservatorium, but I dropped the idea. I want to start with a piece already composed and performed. The challenge is for me to use the Fourth String Quartet of Arnold Schönberg. The rhythm and the melody are complex and the drive, which is the core of this music, goes along with the starting impulsion I had for this work: rhythm and physicality.21.02.06
I am my biggest censorship and my fiercest judge. My own value system is constantly challenged, falling apart some days and strong like the Arc de Triomphe some other days.
Different scales are also being mixed up and that also confuses me.
Freedom of speech is a real topic at the moment; it all started with the murder of Theo van Gogh and by reaction Danish media decided that they could publish everything, like Mohammed as a terrorist. As a matter of fact our society became its own censorship. Everything is focused for the holy economy and everything going against it is not welcome. Ideas that are irrelevant, ideas anti-something are not published. I realize that as a dancer I have been in a hyper protected environment. A choreographer asks you to dance; he does not ask you to challenge your own vision. Being a dancer is actually being a good soldier. You have to obey to the hierarchy. Naturally, now as a choreographer, the question of free speech pops out like an evidence. Art is one of the territories in our society where free speech is admitted and that is not completely true. I could challenge my borders of expression. Where are my own limits?
Instead, I am busy with the tension bow, how to make an interesting work, how to develop my own method? Maybe the topic of the tension bow could meet at one moment the freedom of speech issue and create a surprise, a rupture. In art, my ultimate challenge would be to have a multilayer work, which challenges the audience intellectually, emotionally, aesthetically and spiritually. In short the total art work! 22.02.06
The surprise is an element of wonder. The unexpected will always trigger some tension. The art scene in democracy is by excellence a zone in our society where opinion and freedom can be expressed. We can question if that is really true and to what extend, but in principle this could be a correct affirmation. What is the use of this freedom in my work? In the fundamental of my approach I do not try to be new; I try to recycle what I have been told and to bring it within my own vision. The question is how much I challenge myself . Maybe a good trick would be to imagine that I am an alien and I am just arriving in this world. What would I think of my work? Is it relevant? Am I making interesting choices? In a way, questioning your own work is questioning your own identity and for that reason it is tough. Funny enough I feel confident in my own research. I feel that I am on real ground, with a real purpose, and have a real identity. Why not looking at it that way? It is not up to me to think what is really surprising, because it might be for someone and not for someone else. It is although important to surprise myself, to keep a certain innocence and freshness within my research.24.02.06
Within a performance time is also experience.
Clarity in the work, reading it as an audience is a source of satisfaction. It is about the intention of the maker, as long there is a drive and a real clear direction we can go over the I like/don’t like.26.02.06
I was really glad I went yesterday to the last one of Emio Greco of Extra dry. It was a lesson for me to see this work. There are no indulgences and nothing is left thoughtless.
His feeling for time is extraordinary. He is absolutely not afraid to stretch and develop a scene. He left behind the overdone performing I saw last time by him. Decor, light, costumes are one and that is excellent. I really see that he has now his own signature and vocabulary and this is fabulous to see. He puts the dance in the centre of his work and I respect that very much. He is an absolute amazing performer. Yesterday we were talking about clarity in the attention of the maker. It is satisfying for the audience to see something clear. There was a lot of clarity in the dance yesterday, but sometimes I could not connect to the action, just watching what they were doing. Emio is in that sense flirting with the non-sense or maybe blurring his tracks, so that we keep on wondering what is going on. That why I was more impressed than touched, I think. It is in the musicality of his phrasing that I wanted to have more rhythm, more music and not only nervousness. Two strong musical impacts in the beginning with a big noise and at 2/3 with the Spring of Antonio Vivaldi: the rest was subtle sound, except one high pitch track, which was well done. The light was extremely powerful with around fifty pairs on the ceiling. This is the light I always want, but there is always someone to tell me that I do not need it. 27.02.06
It is interesting to put people together to research things and let the information just flow from one to the other one. This week the Collab06 in Amsterdam will be exciting. Today we experimented video taping some action at a rate of a still frame each six second and then each one second. We added afterwards subtitles from the movie The Brotherhood of the Wolf that we downloaded from some specialized site. That offered a funny story line that has eventually nothing to do with the actual movement action, but more often than I thought it makes really funny pictures. To have text instantly from the net with the use of existing subtitles is really interesting. Maybe we could make an installation with a web cam where people could see themselves in a still frame and have a text that suggests something completely weird but could eventually make sense.1.3.06
Mathematical body, musical body, poetic body. I have a method in my madness!
Every artist is busy with his own obsession. It is a good way to introduce an idea in a group.
The body likes to move.
The body like to explore new sensations.
The body is restless.
The body is hyperactive.
The body needs attention.
The body is hungry.
The body wants ecstatic sensation.
The body want to feel good.
The body likes to have food and being in a digestive mode.
The body likes stimulations.
The body wants harmony.
The body is unsatisfied.
An artist today is selling ideas, dreams and sensations.17.03.06
I am excited to try out tonight our new version of Corps à Corps. It is called the twenty minutes version. I am fascinated to observe that I can again and again as a performer question myself about my motivation, my purpose to perform. For whom am I performing? A show is a ritual. Every performance is a certain ritual, where we create a meaning for what we are doing, in the preparation and in the action itself. The word ritual is the link between existentialist art form and daily life.18.3.06
We performed the twenty minutes version of Corps à Corps with a new start at the ArtEZ Academy in Arnhem. It seems that this version is working well and strong as a stand-alone work. It was a stimulating encounter with the other students and Joao de Silvia, especially with the remakes and the criticisms I got for the two last version of Corps à Corps. The one of Joao de Silvia were extreme: monotone, not intimate, and not tactile! He saw the performance in Düsseldorf on 10 December. The space was too big and too wide and we got lost. My performance was not convincing. I let him express his impression, although I do not think this performance was so bad. It was the first time we performed abroad with also two months of creation in the legs and the head. Here I see the reason for a little shift in the concentration and energy. Again it is about redefining the purpose, the focus in a new situation. One interesting note came out: in the fraction were the decision is made to decide for the next move, is emerging the magical moment. It is that second where everything is still possible, where there is a kind of inner silence to grab the next impulse. As a performer it is maybe to just breath out, to let the moment of observation exist before taking the next decision.
Two ideas were shared with other students that I liked very much. The first one is: Whatever you do and present, even what you could describe as nothing, is communicating something. Are you ready to find out what you are communicating? The other was about my way of performing. I could allow myself to surrender, to close my eyes, to stop being a fighter on the stage. Corps à Corps is a constant balance and composition between our two bodies. Depending of the mood and the energy, the work can be perceived very differently. Reflecting on the process of making this work, of performing it and evaluated it, I would like to express that it has been a sort of incredible travel and a sort of initiation. It feels like we have been in charge of our destiny and of our vision. This is the start of a new era for us: creative collaboration in our virtual and physical dance research studio, the Meyer Chaffaud Studio.Home